Historically, web portals, which are centralized web locations that provide access to content and applications, have served the needs of end users accessing a remote site that provides them with content. Additionally, the applications provided have been relatively straightforward informational applications such as stock tickers, weather information feeds or search windows. Over the past three to four years, web portals have been utilized for more complicated tasks, and have begun to integrate the types of functionality that has historically been associated with local desktop applications. In order to address these new usage scenarios for portals, developers have sought to provide portals that can easily be accessed by multiple users. Some environments enable users to develop custom desktops or homepages providing access to multiple applications.
However, the interoperability between these applications is often limited, making it difficult for a user to utilize content or resources associated with one application in another application. Often resources must be saved to a central file system in one application and then accessed separately from another application, without any easy means for moving or copying the resources.
What is needed are improved methods and mechanisms for sharing resources between applications in a web portal environment to enable portals to provide collaborative applications that could be utilized by multiple users.